


Oh When the Saints

by ossapher



Series: The Macaroniverse -- Lams Modern AU [16]
Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: Gen, Lafayette's very long name, Macaroniverse, basically a pronunciation guide disguised as a fic, culture clash, hopefully at least somewhat cute, struggles with English, struggles with French
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 17:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6714295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lafayette attempts to answer the question, "Yeah, but what's your real name?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh When the Saints

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by [geneticdriftwood's adorable visual mnemonic](http://geneticdriftwood.tumblr.com/image/143399501101) for Laf's full name! I always considered myself a huge Laf fan, but I could never remember his full name until I saw that post. When he was in America people mostly just called him "Lafayette" or "the marquis" to save themselves the trouble, which means he could very well have been America's first single-name celebrity.

 “Yeah, but what’s your real name?”

It’s a weird question to ask first thing, and for a moment Lafayette isn’t sure he’s heard the girl right over the pounding bass of the club’s music. It’s only his third week in America and he’s still very much feeling the difference between TV English and real-life English. “I’m sorry?”

“What’s your real name!” she shouts, stepping in closer.

“Lafayette!” he shouts back. Maybe she also misheard him?

“No! What’s your REAL name?! Like, what are you called?”

“My name is La! Fay! Ette!”

She cracks up, and at the same time the pounding bass gives way to something all glittery and treble, a little easier to hear through. “Are you one of those single-named people? Like Madonna? Or Beyoncé?”

“Oh! Oh, I see what you’re asking. You want my.... the complete name, all the names.”

She giggles, although he’s not sure if he said anything funny. “We call that your full name. Or, you know, your first name would be a start.”

“Well, that’s a more complicated question than you might guess,” Lafayette says, a little relieved that he’s finally figured out what she’s asking. His “real” name, honestly. What a weird way to say it. “Technically the first name in the sequence is Marie, but the name I would go by is Gilbert, but that is last in the sequence of what you would call given names, because they’re not family names or titles or other things.”

“Marie!” She giggles again, throwing her head back, and punches his arm. “Oh my God, you have a girl’s name!”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Lafayette says. He likes that one-- some days he likes it most. Certainly it outclasses Roch, which looks like something between rich and rock and sounds like something between roast and roach. So many words to keep straight! “Half the world does. I assume you do as well.”

“You’d be right about that! I’m Maggie Shippen,” she says, offering her own name up like he’s supposed to recognize it.

“Oh? Maggie Shippen. Very nice,” he says, hoping he sounds impressed enough. “But anyway, the Marie is only a part. My full name, since you asked, is Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette.”

For a moment the wide grin disappears from her face, replaced by stunned amazement. Then she lets out a shriek of delight. “Oh my _God_ , that is, like, _so many names_!”

“My mother had a love for… I don’t know the word… _hagiographie_? She liked, um, the people, they follow God very closely and a lot of them were killed in weird awful ways and praying to them is supposed to be good luck.” In French the word is _saint_ , but he’s not sure of the English. “It’s a little strange, because first, you’d think that would be bad luck, and also because of course she was Muslim, like me, and she certainly wasn’t thinking about this awkwardness with my relatives when she named me. But in any case she liked the art and the history. When I was a kid she sometimes took me to the churches around our house and we would look at the windows.”

The girl’s breezy mask is slipping more and more. Oh, right, he’s referring to his mother in the past tense and rambling about _hagiographie_ ; either one of those would throw most people and the combination is probably deadly. “Anyway,” he says, a little defensive, “you asked.”

“Can you say that again? So I can remember?”

Lafayette frowns. He has a name for people in America (Lafayette) and he had a name with his mother (Gilbert) and he has a thousand secret nicknames with Samar. Is Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette somehow _him_ , in a way Lafayette alone isn't? He treasures every single name as a favor from his mother, but he’s aware that the total effect is unwieldy and foreign-sounding here, and he doesn’t quite understand why this stranger wants to commit it to memory--if she thinks it will grant her some insight. Still, he smiles gamely. “I heard of a trick for remembering things,” he says. “You make the pieces into words, and you make the words into a story, and you remember the story.”

“Every good boy does fine,” she nods.

“Of course he does.” Lafayette grins nervously. He has no idea what she’s talking about. Don’t _good_ and _fine_ mean the same thing? Isn’t it good you’re supposed to do? Shouldn’t it be _every fine boy does good_? Still, he has no option now but to struggle on. “So, if you imagine Mary and Joseph are walking along and they run into… um… that actor man, Paul Rudd, maybe… and they all have designer handbags from Yves Saint Laurent, and of course you know that Yves is pronounced like _eve_ because he is a famous designer, and they are carrying around, um, little roaches--”

“Ew,” Maggie says.

“...um… happy cute little roaches? Only, really, it is pronounced more like _roash_ but you don’t really have the sound in English. So, that gets you to Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch. And then is my given name, _Gilbert_. It is spelled like your English name Gilbert--”

“I always loved the name Gilbert,” Maggie says, leaning close like she’s confiding in him. “If I had a baby chicken, I would totally name it Gilbert. Okay, so we’ve got Marie, Joseph, Yves, Roch, Gilbert.”

“Yes but it’s not that Gilbert, it’s more like _zhil-bere_. With a really soft G, like Gilette,” If he’s going to give this girl his name, she’s at least going to say it right.

“Gilette’s just a regular old soft G in English. Like a J sound.”

“Oh? Merde. I mean to say, shit. It’s still Zhil-bere.”

“Jilbear.”

“No, not your J sound. Zh. Zh.”

“Zhilbear.”

“Yes, but softer. _Gilbert_.”

“Zhilbear.”

“Eh, close enough.”

“No, I wanna get it right!”

He sighs internally. “ _Gilbert_.”

“Zhilbehre.” She makes a choking sound on the last syllable.

“Maybe let’s move on.”

“Zhilbehhrre.”

“I… no.”

“Jilberhre.”

“You are regressing.”

“Zhhilbear.”

“The next part--”

“ZHIL-bere.”

“Okay but the stress was wrong. How about we--”

“Zhil-bere.”

“... that…. that was very nearly correct!”

“WHOOOOO!” Maggie screams, and puts her hands up for a high-five. He obliges.

“Now, the next part of my name,” he begins, but she interrupts.

“Oh my God, there’s _more_?”

“You insisted on the full experience, now you must see it through,” he scolds, shaking a finger in mock sternness. “Next part. _Du Motier_. First syllable is like a motor, in a car, and then just “yay” like you’re excited, but… more French. Easy.”

“Du Morty-ay?” she tries, making a face.

“No, like motor. Mo.”

“Moty-ay.”

“Eh.”

“Moty-eh.”

“That was better. Even more with the mo, and try to smooth the end. _Motier_.”

“Motieeh.”

“Very close. Shorten the end a bit.”

“ _Motier_.”

“That’s it! That was wonderful! _Gilbert du Motier_.”

“Zhilbehre du Motier.” She clears her throat. “Sorry, _Gilbert du Motier_.”

“And the last bit is just de Lafayette.”

“de Lafayette. Okay, Marie-Joseph...Paul--don’t tell me-- Roch--”

“Yves.”

“Shit! Marie-Joseph Paul...Yves... Roch Gilbert du Motier… de Lafayette.”

Well, it’s taken them a quarter of an hour, but Maggie’s finally gotten it. If she doesn’t get it exactly right every time, at least she’s not egregiously wrong. She repeats his name several more times, fixing it in her memory, before a she looks at him with a sheepish expression.

“Um… Gilbert, I was just… wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Could I just call you Lafayette?”

He can’t help it; he laughs, because that was exactly what he’d asked her to do in the first place. “As a matter of fact, I think that’s an excellent idea. You think I’m not just, ah, copying Beyoncé now?”

“Well,” she says, nodding, “I guess you’re cool enough to pull it off.”


End file.
